CLPR represents home accessories, furniture, bedding, tabletop, gifts, and personal care.

I always tell clients interested in building their brand that they need to stand for something (positive).  To me there should be more to a company than merely selling thousands of pieces of furniture, box after box of hand cream, or millions of beautifully crafted dishes without having some sort of positive impact on the world.

I’ve worked with a number of causes over the years, most often benefiting children or the environment.  But I’ve always been a strong advocate for animals.  I grew up on a small farm in Northern California where we had lots of dogs, cats, horses, large tanks of tropical fish and an exotic variety of birds: Silky Chickens, Rhode Island Red Roosters, Peacocks, Pheasants and more.  I think I tend to be more compassionate about animals as a result and couldn’t imagine life without pets.

I started watching Whale Wars on Animal Planet (Friday nights) about a month ago.  Anyone who happened to see my tweets while I was watching that first episode knows my reaction – pretty amazed at what goes on out there in the Southern Ocean – and not in a good way.  There’s literally nothing short of two tiny navies doing battle on the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary with seemingly no intervention from any governing body.  It’s quite serious and very very sad.

There’s a group that claims to be doing research via the slaughter of about 1000 whales a year on this whale sanctuary where whaling has been prohibited since 1994 – oh, the group just happens to sell whale meat when they’re done “researching”.  If they couldn’t sell what they slaughter would they be there at all?  I’d like to see – hopefully demand will dry up as we get closer to whaling season this year.  I have big doubts that all of Japanese culture is wild for whale meat as the ICR would hope – in fact scanning around the web I see plenty of Japanese voices dead against it.

According to a recent article in The Japan Times, ICR spends more on PR than they do their alleged “research”:

“PR is crucial to maintaining such vested interests. The Institute of Cetacean Research, for example, spends far more on public relations than actual research. The tone of its campaigns tends to be overtly nationalistic, suggesting that eating whale meat is an issue of “culture” and “tradition.”"

Reading through the article it seems clear that there isn’t really a real market for whaling and that this group is attempting to cultivate one.

ICR likes to say that whaling is a big part of Japanese heritage – while the facts are that it didn’t get big there until about 70 years ago – global whale populations have been in sharp decline since.  I’d like to inject that I live just about 30 miles from an historic whaling town in Connecticut – traditions (when there are real ones) change with evolving attitudes and realities.  The town now makes a killing selling tickets to its aquarium (which has quite a few live whales swimming around for visitors) and its well preserved antique village where tourist marvel at the antiquated ways.

Counter to the poachers is the Sea Shepherd organization, helmed by Paul Watson. This group is nothing short of amazing – an offshoot of Greenpeace,  they’re a rag tag navy that goes out for months at a time – often out-matched by the whalers who have faster and more vessels.  But through steely determination they keep on – thank goodness, as there’s no one else out there lending a hand.  I have to say Whale Wars really opened my eyes – I’ve spent quite a lot of time researching the issue as a result.

Here’s a fab slide show from Flickr that includes some video of Sea Shepherd that is really intriguing.  (I especially love their logo).

Suffice to say, we think the whales of the world could benefit from a little PR boost from our neck of the woods.  We’re going to devote a substantial amount of time over the next few months to supporting whales, dolphins, squid, sea turtles and other ocean critters.  Obviously this is pro bono since few whales or dolphins have checking accounts.  We’ll do this through social media, events, celebrity outreach, and much, much more.  It’s not about one particular group, company, or country – it’s about whales.

The amazing whale photos above from photographer Michael Dawes.

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